


the boy (with fire in his eyes)

by orphan_account



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Angst, Drinking, Mentions of Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 08:53:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2144631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All the times Haymitch has seen Finnick, and all the times he hasn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the boy (with fire in his eyes)

The first time Haymitch sees Finnick Odair when he reviews the Reapings with his tributes. His pair this year are scrawny and short. 

His girl is eighteen, the oldest of a huge brood of at least six others. Haymitch knows her parents; they’re rats, not worth the scraps that even Greasy Sae throws away, the type of people that voluntarily have more kids to get more tesserae and then keep it all for themselves. They’re scum, that’s how the rest of the District views them.

Haymitch, on the other hand, admires their will to live even if they sacrifice innocent children to do so. After all, he thinks bitterly while looking at their emaciated daughter, rats know rats.

The boy has a permanent cough from years working in the mines despite the fact that workers are only supposed to start when they turn eighteen. His boy is only fifteen.

The kid’s black hair and grey eyes are typical of the Seam, but his fine-boned features aren’t. He has high cheekbones that cut through the harsh angles of his face, and there’s an intensity in his eyes that Haymitch thinks, for the most fleeting of moments, could maybe get him through, could maybe win a few sponsors, could maybe, maybe, maybe-

Then the kid coughs, a bone-rattling cough that hollows his throat and leaves him vomiting up blood, and Haymitch looks away.

They’re both going to die. His kids are going to get killed.

It’s been years since Haymitch started this mentoring shtick, and he’s never brought any of the kids home. That’s alright, though. He pays his penance in more than a few other ways. No one knows that the tributes, the sacrifices, are always named his in his mind. Everyone knows that he can’t even remember any of their names. No one knows that he does it on purpose.

Well, Haymitch watches the Reapings, getting progressively drunker as he does so. He looks at the bloodthirsty kids from One, the polished pretty faces from Two, the sharp gaze of Three, and then-

the entire world stops at Four.

He hears sharp intakes of breath from both his tributes, the girl a bit louder than the boy, and even the Capitol assistants have stopped their meddlesome chattering to drop their jaws at the figure that appears on the screen.

It’s a boy, the screen tells him, a boy named Finnick Odair who’s only fourteen years old. And he is absolutely stunning. His eyes are strong as they glance around the room, confident and sure. There’s even a touch of defiance, some spark there that, Haymitch thinks, if given the right circumstances, could turn into a flame. Haymitch remembers those eyes.

Haymitch glances over at his own boy, whose name he can’t, won’t, refuses to remember, and feels a pang of regret. Too bad. He might have had this boy survive a bit longer if it wasn’t for this Finnick. 

He laughs out loud, drunkenly, sloshes the liquid out of the side of his extravagant tumbler. “Sorry, kid,” he says. “Always someone prettier.” 

Then he downs the rest of the cup and passes out.

A few weeks later, and Finnick Odair is crowned the youngest ever Victor in the history of the Hunger Games. His golden skin is flawless, and his bronzed hair is impeccable. Finnick is crowned without a scratch on him, the metallic crown settling amongst the perfect locks of his hair and with every person in the Capitol screaming his name.

Meanwhile, there are two coffins being shipped back to District 12. One with a spear wound through her neck from the Bloodbath and another with lungs torn apart by incessant coughing from the bitterly cold nights. His girl. His boy. Another two gone, sacrificed to the metal claws in the sky. Haymitch closes his eyes.

Fuck.

He spends the rest of the night getting drunk off his face and wakes up two days later in a Capitol room where the covers are extravagant and suffocating, the walls are detailed and confining, and he is the most disgusting person in the room.

Haymitch isn’t arrogant enough to say the entire building; after all, this is where most of the Victors spend the night. The pretty ones are getting detoxed or stitched up by Capitol doctors with their pockets lined with money to keep their mouths shut. The pretty ones leave without a scratch on them and with their pockets torn like the clothing they wore going out. They leave with more of them torn out.

Several of them Haymitch can list off the top of his head. Several of them who’ve have so much ripped away from them that there’s nothing left but a body to go and warm a bed, a counter, a floor, and basement, wherever it’s positioned. He knows several more with jagged pieces gouged out, just enough to still hurt and leave them with dark streaks running down their cheeks when morning comes.

And he knows one more on the way there; he knows Finnick Odair will become one of them soon.

 ----------- 

The second time Haymitch sees Finnick Odair, he is hungover and on his way to getting spectacularly drunk yet again.

If Haymitch had a best friend in the Capitol, it would be Chaff. Chaff is his drinking buddy and thus his confidant and companion. They do not, however, do hangovers together, because they end up trying to kill ghosts of one another with knives or whatever is lying nearby.

Never let it be said that Victors could cope well.

Anyways, Chaff is Haymitch’s friend. He’s from Eleven, he knows how it feels to stop monitoring the screens after the first three days. That’s why the two end up drinking together in the mentors’ monitoring room and doing their best to pass out every few hours. They loudly mock any mentors who pass them, and Chaff makes drunken passes at the women while Haymitch advises them all to stop caring. The other mentors leave them alone; it’s basically tradition by now.

Two years after he won the Hunger Games, and two years since he started being called to President Snow’s office, Finnick Odair walks into the Center as a mentor. His golden skin is flawless, and his bronzed hair is impeccable. His face is narrower, his cheekbones more pronounced, and his eyes are empty. He’s also barely wearing anything

Chaff wolf-whistles vulgarly in his direction. “That’s what we like to see around here!” he calls raucously, sliding a sleazy sneer in his direction. “Show some skin, that’s what I always tell the ladies here.” He gestures to Enobaria who only bares her sharpened teeth and flicks him off. Blowing a kiss back, Chaff winks at Finnick and mock-whispers, “Don’t mind her. She’s just jealous ‘cus she doesn’t get nearly the amount of attention you do, pretty boy. Jealousy’s a bitch, just like her owner.”

“Say that again and I’ll rip your throat out,” Enobaria snarls from her corner, watching the tribute from 2 is stabbing some kid from another district to death. The cannon sounds only a few seconds later.

Chaff drunkenly stands and totters dangerously to the side for a second before regaining his balance. “Now, now, Enobaria,” he slurs “We all know your best years are behind you. Nothin’ to be ashamed about, dearie, we all pass our golden years some time. Some faster than others.” He turns back to Finnick, who’s been standing soundlessly, his jaw working. “Now you, though, the Capitol’s golden boy…” Chaff eyes him up and down critically. “You’ll be golden for years yet. Uh-huh, got many years, got many appointments left on you yet.”

Haymitch thinks he hears a whisper from the boy’s lips: “Wish they’d just let me rust.”

He heaves himself up, and slumps on the top of the table with heavy-lidded eyes to mumble against the mahogany wood. “Gonna be gold for a long while yet, boy,” he mumbles. “Better hope you stay shiny and useful to the Capitol for a long time. Rusting… that’s not good. You lose your ransom that way. Lose everything. Nah, stay useful, boy.”

By the time he’s done speaking, Finnick is gone, and Haymitch wonders if he was even there in the first place before passing out in a pile of his own sick.

\----------- 

The third time Haymitch sees Finnick Odair, he’s dancing with some Capitol woman in a dimly lit bar. Whatever designer outfit Finnick was wearing has been tossed to somewhere in the crowd, and the woman’s running garishly painted nails across his sweat-sticky skin.

Haymitch watches Finnick roll his head back and lick his lips, watches the woman’s enraptured stare. She has to be at least ten years older than the eighteen year old Finnick, but she grabs the back of his neck and pulls him into a violent kiss. Finnick hesitates for a second before returning it enthusiastically and gropes her backside with one free hand while she giggles and grabs his crotch. 

Before they go, Finnick surreptitiously glances toward the corner of the room where he knows, and Haymitch knows, there is a camera watching each of their every moves. Haymitch heard that Finnick’s younger brother was killed in a fishing accident a few weeks ago. With that last glance, Finnick and the woman disappear into one of the multiple backrooms.

Haymitch closes his eyes and drinks.

\----------------

There is no fourth time. The next time Haymitch sees the shell being called Finnick Odair, the boy is no longer a boy, but a puppet wearing the usual skin revealing outfit while chatting merrily to one of President Snow’s Gamemakers. The man is drooling, spit congealing at the corner of his mouth where he continuously wipes it away with a napkin as Finnick laughs, his eyes crinkling and his white teeth flashing.

The man nearly has a seizure, and Haymitch watches Finnick excuse himself to a corner of the room where he tips a small white pill into his mouth and swallow it dry. Then he goes back, laughing harder than ever, teeth flashing brighter than ever. The two leave before the party is even over to have, presumably, the best fuck ever. At least, for one of them.

 ----------------

Haymitch doesn’t see Finnick Odair for a long, long time after that. Oh, he sees his image sometimes, even frequently. The boy never seems to be away from the Capitol, constantly in the tabloids, constantly talked about. His artificial laughter rings daily in every house in Panem. He’s like a ghost that no one can escape from, and ironically, no one wants too. They all want to drown in Finnick’s sugar-laden words and whispered promises that he never, ever keeps. 

He sees Finnick in the mentoring room when he’s not too busy dancing in whatever club can afford his presence that night or paying a house-call to whomever President Snow owes a favor too. The first time Finnick is there for more than a few hours at most is when some girl from Four, an Annie Cresta, is in the arena, and then, Finnick refuses to leave the room. From then on, everyone pretends not to know what everyone knows.

As soon as Annie Cresta is declared the winner of the 70th Annual Hunger Games, Finnick is back to his appointments, which are twice as many now. Chaff tells Haymitch the newest joke in the Capitol, the one being told in every house in Panem.

Hey, what did the realtor say to the person who wanted to buy Finnick Odair’s house?

“No need to pay; his private parts are public property!”

Haymitch tells Chaff it’s hysterical. That night, he goes to his Capitol apartment and drinks himself silly. He passes out, thinking about the spark that was, once upon a time, present in Finnick Odair’s eyes. But in hindsight, it never stood a chance.

By the time Finnick turns twenty-one, he’s fucked half the population in the Capitol and been fucked by the other half. He goes out to parties, both public and private, and is never seen without someone on his arm. He is a regular in President Snow’s office, and the Odair family is still alive in District Four. Haymitch never really knew the kid, but he knows that it’s not the boy from District Four anymore.

Then at one Capitol dinner, celebrating the winner of that years Hunger Games, Haymitch sees Plutarch Heavensbee talking to Finnick. Plutarch has a friendly hand laid on Finnick’s back, one that moves ever closer to his waist, but whatever he’s murmuring intimately into Finnick’s ear, it triggers a fire in Finnick’s eyes that reminds Haymitch of the one he wore when he was first Reaped.

That’s the first time Haymitch sees Finnick Odair.

\----------------- 

The next time Haymitch sees Finnick Odair, it’s at a clandestine meeting arranged by secret code and hidden signals that span months. Haymitch isn’t even sure he knows where this is, but he’s sitting at a table with Plutarch Heavensbee. Johanna Mason is glaring from a corner, Chaff studying his stump of an arm, Beetee observing them all with calmly intelligent eyes-

-and Finnick Odair is sitting across from them all with a wildfire in his eyes. No, Haymitch reflects while staring at the golden skin covering bulges of honed muscle, the bronzed hair falling over a harsh face. It’s a man’s face, Haymitch realizes. Finnick Odair is finally a man. 

Together, they are planning a rebellion.


End file.
